


Still

by ice_hot_13



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-20
Updated: 2013-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-20 18:31:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/890470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ice_hot_13/pseuds/ice_hot_13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two little Rose/Doctor ficlets (spoilers for Ten's seasons)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still

(1)

He still sees her. He sees her in brief glimpses - in things Amy says, in things River doesn’t do. He sees her when anyone says _guilt,_ and when he’s challenged - when they say the world’s caught up with him, that everyone has to die, and he says _but look at all I can do,_ this desperate plea - he always thinks first of Rose. In a moment, he can see the sunrise of the Great Sparkling Gorge, he can see Christmas on Earth in 1942, he can watch the first and last day of any planet - but he says _I can help Rose Tyler with her homework,_ because with all the world to choose from, this is where he would go. No one understands just what that means, how every moment in time can come back to this - _I can see Rose again._

The worst part is that some version of him is seeing her every day, and it’s not him, not really. This other him is seeing things he can _never see._ He can go back in time all he wants, go back and see her when he was born of war, born of love, but then he was born alone, and this is a self that has never seen Rose.

He could run into her. Universes could converge, the impossible has happened _so many times -_ he could see her, and she wouldn’t know it was him, not anymore. She lives in the lasting impossible - somewhere he can’t have her, with a self that isn’t him, in a time he can’t see.

He still sees her; it hurts because she can’t see him, and one day on a vast expanse of sand, she cried because that was the worst thing she could imagine.

One windy day on a beach, Rose Tyler cried because she wouldn’t see him anymore; if she were there today, she wouldn’t be in tears. She has him; she doesn’t have to miss him anymore, and he’s the self that remembers losing her, the self born alone, the worst way to be after coming from love.

 

(2)

How did they think nothing would _go wrong?_

She’s safe in the parallel world, she’s safe ( _she’s supposed to be safe)_ but she didn’t belong there. She was an entire time stream that was not supposed to exist. And what happens - he’s never seen anything like this before, but they live so firmly in the impossible that he isn’t surprised, he’s hurt but he’s not surprised.

Rose is here. She’s here, but she’s also with that other version of himself, always with one or the other. She disappears from her world to show up in his, and it’s selfish, so selfish, to be so incredibly happy to see her. She has no idea this is happening, it’s like - she has two sets of memories, can’t remember both at the same time. He asked where she thinks she keeps going, and she blinked at him and said _going where?_

“Doctor?” he hears, and he hasn’t seen her in _so long,_ it’s been seven hundred and forty two days. He can’t keep track of time except when it has to do with her. He runs up the tardis ramp to meet her - but she’s stepping back, staring at him. “Where’s the Doctor?” she asks, “what’s happened to him?”

Seven hundred and forty-two days. Two companions, hundreds and hundreds of worlds and times, and a regeneration, being born alone.

“Who’re you?” Rose says, and time - it _breaks._ It shatters right on this moment, because an already-fractured timestream’s been bent too far, because Rose couldn’t come back to him if she didn’t know his face.

_It keeps happening._

It’s Rose Tyler forever saying _who’re you?,_ coming to find him and getting lost in time forever, because she looks at him and every time she says _who’re you?_

“ _You know me!”_ he yells one day, and Amy stares and Rory gapes, but the world is falling apart and here’s his Rose, standing there among the rubble and asking _who’re you,_ this ghosted version of her that knows only this. “You know me, you _do!_ I’m your Doctor! It’s _still me,_ you must know it’s still me!” Everything is falling apart, and this is what he _has to save._ Rose doesn’t know him anymore, and the thought of a Rose that doesn’t know him - it can’t _exist,_ how can something so terrible be possible? “Why can’t you remember?” he begs, “it’s still me, I swore to you it’d still be me! I haven’t _changed!”_ he pleads, but that’s always been the thing he’s the most afraid of, afraid of losing, losing Rose, losing _himself._

“Who’re you?” Rose says.

One moment in time is broken, and on every worst day, there’s Rose, because she was there the first time the world fell apart and she’s there every time after, asking the Doctor _who’re you_ because he lost himself when he lost her, and this is all they are now.

 

 

 


End file.
